


Exile

by Empy (Empyreus)



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Banishment, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Post-Battle of Five Armies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-30
Updated: 2018-12-30
Packaged: 2019-09-30 11:16:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17223026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Empyreus/pseuds/Empy
Summary: Talullah's prompt was "After being exiled Tauriel finds a Dunedain community. (Or after the Return of the King, if you prefer.)". This didn't quite turn out the way I'd planned, but I hope it works all the same.





	Exile

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Talullah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Talullah/gifts).



The forest seems reluctant to release her, like a mother unwilling to let her child leave, reaching out for a final embrace, a final memory to cherish. Even the dark corners seem to ask if she truly means to leave. 

She asks herself the same question, but each time she does, the answer is the same. _You are banished. There is nothing for you here._ Even passing through the forest after leaving the ruins of Dale is a dangerous and foolish thing, but she refuses to leave without a last glance at what was once her home. When she decides to risk fetching more arrows, the sight of the familiar sparring halls makes her sigh turn into a choked sob. _There is nothing for you here. You have forfeited your Captaincy._ Not that it matters, she thinks bitterly, for what use is a Captain so shattered, so heartbroken that she seems a walking shell?

 

The heartbreak rises and falls as it wars with both anger and despair, leaving her exhausted, but she does not have the luxury of stopping to ride it out. Word must already have been sent, messengers chasing her to deliver the royal message. The final strike.

 

She follows the wide band of the Anduin to get to the Old Ford, crossing it at night. The thought of taking the High Pass fills her with a curious mix of dread and anticipation, the thrill of climbing so high and so near the stars being all but eclipsed by the fear of encountering Orcs and being ambushed among the merciless cliffs. The closer she gets to the pass, the greater this gnawing dread grows. When she is at the foot of the pass, looking up at what seems a sheer face of rock with no hint of a path, she hears the shrill echo of an Orcish cry, a terrible gleeful sound that bounces off the cliffs. Other cries join in, too many of them, and it becomes clear to her that this path is one she cannot take. Reckless but not foolish, she tells herself as she steels herself for the long trek to the Gladden Fields.

 

With no company but her thoughts, she travels in a daze at first, breaking into a run as though she might outrun the agony.

 

The air of the fens in Gladden Fields is cloying and chilling by turns, and there is a nameless dread whispering on the winds. There are restless stirrings of icy mists, passing at times right in front of her like wraiths. The moonlight seems colder then, and her heart heavier. Each sound, each call and creak and rustle, raises her hackles, and she berates herself more than once for falling prey to such foolishness. Has she not met far worse? 

She has, but it is a faded glory that brings neither comfort nor courage. 

 

The pass by the fens is narrower but easier to traverse than the High Pass, and so desolate she wonders for a moment if she has taken the wrong path and strayed into a wraith-world devoid of any life. Looking up at the stars speckling the vast dome of sky, she picks out each constellation and whispers its name, but the comfort it has always given her is absent. Has even Varda forsaken her?

 

Once the mountains are at her back, she breathes a little easier, but she still keeps watch at night for enemies she cannot see. The plains stir the unease into constant whispers of worry, phantom noises of arrows in flight, and she seeks trees with each glance. When she finds them, she stands with her palms pressed against their trunks and her gaze fixed at the branchwork above her head. She does not think of it as hiding but as sanctuary, as fortification. Yes, the trees are different here, lighter and somehow kinder, but just as willing to bear her weight as the black-barked trees of Mirkwood.

But for all her new joy at finding footholds even in the alders and beeches, among their sun-bright canopies, she cannot banish the dark thoughts. They come to her at dusk, when day and night mingle and become neither, and she finds herself seeking the familiar silhouettes of her troop and her other kinsmen.

And of those now hopelessly lost to her.

 

The sorrow waxes and wanes like the moon, memories whirled around like the autumn leaves. The people she sees rarely are passing shadows, come and gone like the deer and foxes. The days and months pass equally distantly. She drifts in time, a feather on the winds, buffeted this way and that but never settling.

 

As she wanders, seeking out copses and glades when she can, she slowly comes to realize that the sunlight and birdsong please her nearly as much as the sight of the stars. The many voices ripple and flow like a stream, like the bright shafts of sunlight wavering when the leaves dance. 

But today there is a single call louder than the rest. It persists, sharp and urgent and somehow a little challenging. It takes her a moment to ascertain why it seems foreign to her. Mild winds ruffle her hair as she ascends to the higher branches of the ash, feeling the limbs flex subtly under her feet. Birdsong is all around her, so why should this lone trill suddenly sound so out of place?

Because it is the call of a robin. The redbreast who sings early to late, first and last, but who falls silent in summer.

She stills, back resting against the bole of the tree. The branches have woven a dense canopy, too dense for her to see clearly to the ground or the glade beyond it, but they do not impede her hearing. She can hear the rustle of the trees, leaves of beech and alder and birch each with their own voice, hear the burble of the nearby stream and rattle of sun-baked grass, and the lilting chorus of birds, but nothing else.

Men walk heavy-footed, so she should have known far earlier if they were near. Has she grown careless in her rootless wandering?

 

The same call comes again three days later, the same robin out of season, but now at dusk when the shadows pool as black as they did in Mirkwood. It might be mistaken for the call of a nightingale, but her ears are sharp and she knows each call by heart. She slips down to the ground, confident the shadows will offer her cover.

The meadow stretching in front of her is empty, the tall grass barely moving in the night breeze, but then shapes coalesce out of the shadows, slowly enough for her to count them all and keep them within her field of vision. Three tall men, two to flank her and one to face her, and it is the one facing her who speaks first. 

"You have finally come down from your perch, robin redbreast." There is a slight smile on the sharp features, but so faint she wonders if she truly sees it, and the thought is swiftly blotted out by wonder. He speaks Sindarin as softly and fluently as any of her kinsmen, and is dressed in nearly the same shades of green and brown that her own kin favour. Even his movements seem more like those of an Elf than a Man.

"My name is Tauriel," she says, inclining her head in the nearest thing to a bow her confusion will allow.

"You are not from the Golden Wood," he notes, gesturing at her bow in passing, "nor from Imladris, as far as we can tell."

She blinks, startled. "You are well versed in matters of my kind. How is that?"

He smiles, now a true smile. "Suffice to say that one must know more than just the terrain to be able to guard these lands. If you are not from Imladris or the Golden Wood, then that leaves what was once the Greenwood. That is a long way to travel alone. Is it the Sea that calls to you, or do you wander in search of something else? If it is the Sea you seek, then you have gone astray, robin redbreast. Your path needs to unbend and arc upward if you are to see the Grey Havens." He pauses. "But something tells me that you are not seeking but fleeing. Is that why you flit so restlessly, like a shadow?"

The gaze is level, not evaluating, and she knows there is no slight in the statement, but she still feels a pang. Yes, she is fleeing. Fleeing her home, her banishment, her broken heart. She has fled for months, but still it nips at her heels and gives her no rest. 

"I was--" She halts, feeling as though uttering the word would make her banishment final and all too real. "I cannot go back." It is as true as anything else she might offer as an explanation. 

"You are not the first to face that fate. Arnor was once one kingdom, but now little of that remains, and her people fled like you did. My people fled like you did." 

"You are Dúnedain," she says. 

He nods. "My name is Thoronion." His companions incline their heads minutely but do not speak, seeming instead preoccupied with tracking the horizon and the far verges with their gazes. It should bother her more than it does, she thinks, but perhaps it is a relief to not be judged all at once by so many lest she be found wanting?

"We guard these plains and lands," the Dúnadan to Thoronion's right says, still not looking at her. "Follow who comes and goes, weigh if they are friend or foe."

"What did you judge me to be?" She did not intend to voice the question, but cannot stop it.

"An exile," he says, finally turning to look at her. "Cast to the winds, but with a broken wing. "

 

The sound is almost inaudible, a snap of a branch in the distance, but her hackles instantly rise and she forgets what reply she might have offered to being so curiously likened to a wounded bird. When the snap is joined by another, and then another followed by a rising tide of heavy boots pounding the summer-dry ground, she acts on a soldier's instinct. 

Not waiting for her companions to act, she pulls an arrow out of her quiver and nocks it faster than thought. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees her movement mirrored twice. 

The Orcs are few and move with ill ease even on flat ground, but she knows better than to think it is to her advantage. They stay in front of the thicket of gorse-bushes where the gloom blurs their shapes into the branches, forcing her to waste precious moments judging where to fire.

Her arrow strikes true, as does that of one of her new companions, but two of the Orcs still advance in a rage, trampling their fallen comrade. She barks a curt left-right command out of habit, shouldering her bow and drawing her daggers. To her left, there is a flicker-quick glint of steel, which is all the assurance she needs before moving.

Her heart hammers as it always does, blood singing in her ears as she moves, finding her feet on the flat ground as easily as among the branches, and for a fleeting moment, she sees all of her Elven troop and the Men around her move with the same lethal grace. When she blinks, they are gone, faded into shadows of memory. It makes her still, long enough for the last standing Orc to get all too close to her. She can see the frenzied glint in the dark eyes, but at her next breath, she drives her dagger deep into the sinewy neck and twists.

The silence that descends is as deep as the shadows, and for a moment none of them move.

"More will come," notes the tallest of the Dúnedain, whose name she still does not know. "Not tonight, but soon. We ought to scout the lands more carefully come daybreak, and with more men." He turns on his heel, not waiting for the others to follow, and she finds it curiously easy to fall into step with Thoronion and his other companion. She feels the weight of their gazes once more, but what she can see of them in gloom is approving. 

"Such fierceness is not found in those with broken wings," says Thoronion, his voice so low she doubts the others can hear it. "There is fire in you still that your sorrow has not quenched."

 

The settlement seems to rise out of the ground before her, even though it should have been visible to her from several furlongs away even in the quickly fading light. What little light escapes from behind the shutters and doors is carefully dimmed.

"The least we might do is offer you a place to catch your breath, in return for the aid you have given us," says Thoronion.

She hesitates, slowing her steps. Would it be so terrible a thing to accept his kind offer? How long has it been since she has enjoyed the company of others, the simple pleasure of laughter? How long has it been since she has truly rested without worry about her surroundings? "That is kind of you." She weighs her words for a moment. "I will accept your generous offer, Thoronion. It has been some time since I last enjoyed the company of others."

Thoronion turns back to smile at her. "It has been some time since we last had the pleasure of meeting a daughter of the forest."

The little laugh that escapes her surprises her. How strange that so simple a thing could prove such balm for her frayed peace of mind. _There may yet be something here for you._


End file.
